The present invention relates to content verification techniques in the broadcast industry, and in particular to methods and apparatus for monitoring airplay (i.e., radio and television broadcasts) using a speech recognition (SR) (also referred to herein as "voice recognition" or "VR") system.
Today's media environment provides an almost limitless set of outlets to reach consumers. The content is much as it has been for decades, i.e., advertising, programs, music, and news. What has changed dramatically is that the geographical stratification (e.g., national, regional, local) has been blurred. Particularly true of news, alerts, and commentaries, this blurring means that information is disseminated more quickly than ever. The rapid expansion of media outlets, including radio, television, cable, and the Internet, are proving to be a boon in terms of reaching consumers with information. This has many useful implications, including cost competition to reach an ever-fractionalized marketplace.
All of this calls for an effective and cost-efficient means for monitoring broadcasts that differs from existing systems. Existing systems rely on either (i) passive pattern matching, particularly in the case of music, or (ii) the use of an embedded signal. In the latter instance, a unique signal is encoded into transmitted information ("content") such that the signal can be monitored to verify play. For example, a radio advertisement ("commercial") can include an inaudible signal that is monitored by a special receiver. The receiver detects the inaudible signal to verify that the commercial has been played at the proper time. Each of the existing systems noted above has relative advantages and disadvantages. A common disadvantage of both, however, is that they are not able to intercept spontaneous comments (e.g., impromptu statements made by newscasters), live news feeds, or other such content.
It would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus for improving the tracking of spoken information that is broadcast to a population of receivers, e.g., over the airwaves, on cable, over the Internet, or the like. It would be further advantageous to provide a cost-effective means for tracking broadcast channels for specific words, phrases, and contexts of these.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus having the aforementioned and other advantages. In particular, the present invention enables specific words and phrases to be automatically detected such that the information can serve numerous purposes. For example, novel services can be offered by providing automated tracking of advertising, newscasts, and programs. In this manner, a cost-effective system is provided for, e.g., tracking public relations efforts, localizing news stories, as well as enabling simple verification of airplay of contracted materials. The invention uses voice recognition technology to achieve these and other objectives.